re: My bet is that Blizz is going to do something to make half-ticks useful somehow, if only to avoid the situation you described—infinite tiers of this-much-bonus-haste-is-useless,-but-this-much-plus-one-is-a-10%-increase-to-dps.

I’m not so sure about this. I mean, rightly or wrongly, the first thing that came to mind was “hit” for a hunter. Need 8% and everything scales down to the nearest integer. 7.99%? Tough crap, that equals 7% (which transfers to hunter pet). And, remember, back in the day when BM hunter was king, a pet providing 40-50% of your DpS which missed an extra 1% of the time resulted in gobs of missed DpS. Perhaps, like hunters (via focused aim), mages will get talents that allow you to increase your haste by a quantitative amount (10%, 20%, 30%). Of course, you could also gem haste to get to the next level (200, 400, 600, etc.). Perhaps then we can all (hunters and mages alike) share in the glee of having to totally re-talent and re-gem every time we get a new piece of gear which screws up our hit, err, haste rating.

SpiritusRex

Haste cannot work this way. Don’t ask me how it *will* work; I just know haste has to scale smoothly, otherwise gearing up my shadowpriest will give me an aneurysm.

It’s funny with paladins. laughable for all that time. Then for a period they were ludicrously overpowered. To the point of slaughtering armies of people with one move. And now…back to underpowered but at least not in a humiliating way. What’s in store for them cataclysm?

Not sure about other mage players but as a fire mage, I find in the order of easiest to beat to hardest:
Paladin, ret easiest, holy and then prot.
Warrior, prot hardest but even so not hard.
Hunters, yeh /hug hunters literally.
Moonkin, they better wish their mushroom is powerful.
Rogues, especially with resilience no problem with rogues.
DK, Too much anti-magic stuff and silences make them a challenge to beat.
Druids, cats…geez they are crazy these days. The bear is not so tough but usually they are cats in disguise!
Warlocks, depending on their skill, warlocks are the scissors to mage’s paper. Thanks for nerfing wotf
Priests, hate shadow because it’s tough being dotted to death whilst silenced the whole time.
TREE!!! They do not need more buffs in any way…for goodness sakes. Are you seeing them in BGs? Are you seeing them in arena? 1 on 1 they are a caster’s nightmare.

I am happy to pay $25 if it meant no more bots in BGs. Nothing in WoW bothers me as much as bots, the farming bots, the levelling bots, and the worst is BG bots.

Its really fun but damn it is definately a comp where one mistake can cost you everything. CC lining up perfectly is a must in order to have even a shot at winning.

Though, paladin+warrior teams die easily.
Very easily.

They do well in BG’s because:

1. People are too stupid to CC, kite, spread out, or run away from them. People who are smart enough to do these things are frequently hampered by those who don’t understand that sheep breaks on damage.
2. Survival cooldowns/trinkets tend to be blown more often in BG’s (as it’s not always a fair fight), so the chance of a Ret catching you with your escapes down is more likely.
3. A ret who bubbles with 10% health in an arena is little more than an annoyance. You switch to his friends and kill them off, and his options are: a) do ineffectual dps, or b) do ineffectual healing, or c) heal himself and then die because now it’s 2v1. A ret who bubbles with 10% health in a BG just bought his team 12 more seconds to rez, just delayed the flag cap by 12 more seconds, just got 12 more seconds of beating on that almost-dead artillery gun or Demolisher.
4. You can LoH in a BG.

In arena? Rets have a very poor showing. They have only two interrupts on minute-long cooldowns (Belfs get another, which makes them the only semi-viable Retadin race ever), no mortal strike effect, and their major offensive cooldowns blackout their major defensive cooldowns and vice versa—i.e. they have no way to pressure healers effectively. Their only CC break, aside from trinket, is their bubble (i.e. major survival cooldown) or Hand of Freedom-ing stuns, which is their key to not being kited the whole game.

Yes, they have crazy awesome short-ranged burst and can be very hard to kill when played defensively, but that’s about where their advantages stop. They are supremely easy to kite, chain CC on, and disable.